No will

[Tortslife]

Hi
would really love some advice, my mother passed away February last year without a will. But always made it clear that my two sons were to be receive all her assets. My two sisters know this and all her friends.
Now 3 weeks after her death my middle sister(i am the youngest) who lived with my mom, had claimed the life insurance and never told me, not sure if the eldest knew. Then 6 weeks later tried to shut all my moms bank accounts and the halifax wanted probate so she left it and again told no one. I had suspicion of what she was doing so called the insurance and they would not tell me anything as she was the one who claimed and had shown the death certificate. I went to the bank who said probate was needed. So in the July I instructed a solicitor to get involved and gave them my sisters details which the eldest sent me a message stating not to send further solicitors letters to her house and that all assets of our moms belonged to my middle sister alone. Then the middle sister not only abused the solicitors verbally but went on to call me and abuse me too, so I asked the solicitors not to act any further.
This year, a year on I decided to apply for probate myself and cut the solicitors out saving a lot of money. I named.my sisters on the forms and filled in as much as knew. I got the grant of representation from the court and then after a week went to the bank. After another week they closed my mother's accounts and I put the money in my youngest sons account for now. Within 3 days the bank had sent a final letter to my mothers old address where my middle sister lives, and all hell had broken loose.
My eldest sister in now nearing two weeks has sent me a barrage of abusive calls, txts, emails, sms, messenger, wats app via her accounts, her sons accounts, her boyfriend sent nasty messages and her friend, over 100 messages. She is using friends accounts pretending people are in hospital so she can get me to respond to her. She has also started contacting my friends whom she has not spoken to for over 25 years accusing me of fraud and theft.
I have reported her to the police for harrassment and she is still continuing even though she has been warned.
I have not had time with all this going on to sort the estate, and I know they have fraudulently obtained other assets and wont tell me about them. She is just stating I should hand all the money to her solicitor, then she saying it should be split 3 ways even though she dont want the money...
how long should it take me to sort this out, surely not 4 days or 2 weeks which it has been so far?
can I do this without involving a solicitor and incurring costs from the estate?
what are my rights in splitting the money between my two boys as my mother wished?

thanks in advance

[james_law]

Your mother died 'intestate', which means without a will, regardless of the expressed wishes of your mother everything will be subject to the laws of inheritance. Your mothers estate will and should be divided up equally between all the children.

[des8]

.....and it will take longer than a few days to sort out and deal with the estate.

As you have letters of administration it is for you to collect all your late mother's assets and protect them, to settle any debts and then to distribute the residue according to the intestacy laws.

Tagging Peridot for you who will have more advice come Monday

[Peridot]

Hi Tortslife,

I'm sorry to hear about your mother and the subsequent issues that have arisen. It seems there are a number of issues that have arisen now and we'll try and flag each of them for you.

Unfortunately whatever an individual has indicated verbally in life, irrelevant of how many people they have told as to what they would like to happen after their death is not legally binding, unless it is set out in a Will.

Without a Will the rules of intestacy have to be followed. In this situation that means that your mothers estate so all her assets should be divided equally between her children (or their children, the grandchildren in equal shares, if a child has pre-deceased the parent). As your mother did not leave a Will legally the rules must be followed.

As far as your other's insurance policy is concerned do you know if she had nominated someone to receive this on her death? It may be that she had said she wished your sister to receive the policy? The other scenario is that the insurers were happy to pay to the person who provided the death certificate to them. Did your sister register the death? Usually they would require the person receiving the money (unless nominated) to sign an indemnity form which basically passes the buck to the person receiving the funds in respect of any potential liability from anyone else entitled. So they can't be sued but the person receiving could be.

A similar thing occurs with the banks. Many banks will pay out the account to the person who presents the death certificate provided there is below a certain amount in the account. This is probably why the Halifax have said they need a Grant of Probate (technically a Grant of Letters of Administration as there is no Will but basically the same thing). The amount in the account must be over their limit. In any event an indemnity would have been obtained from your sister by the other banks who released funds to her.

What had the solicitor advised you to do? Did they suggest obtaining the Grant yourself? Did the various banks, insurers etc provide you with the date of death values of all the assets for the purposes of obtaining the Grant? Is there still missing information meaning not all assets have been declared on the probate forms? As part of the Oath you have to confirm that you will collect in the assets and preserve and protect the assets until the estate has been administered. If you don't then do that you can be personally liable as the administrator. Did your mother own her own home. I appreciate your sister lives there was it jointly or solely owned or rented? Your sister may have an interest in the property if she has been living there and may jointly own the contents. What has happened to her personal belongings?

As there was no Will the assets once collected in should be kept separate from anyone else's account until such time as they are distributed equally between you and your siblings. The money shouldn't be in your son's account irrelevant of the fact you believe this is what your mother wanted. Of course what you eventually do with your inheritance is your business but only once the estate has been administered and distributed.

If you can establish the exact value of the estate then provided the estate is divided equally between the siblings you can of course deduct an amount from any distribution if the sum has already been received by that sibling. It does not of course help if they have received an amount above that which they should receive.

I'm not sure why the bank would write to your mother's address if you had provided the Grant of probate and asked them to deal with you as the administrator, although mistakes do happen of course. It is unfortunate that there are evidently issues between all of you and information has apparently not been shared as it happened. It may be that the only way to sort this out is to open discussions with your siblings. Maybe if you suggest that the whole estate is to be divided equally between you they will be more forthcoming on how you can deal with it going forward. With the best will in the world and everything going to plan it can often take several months to deal with the estate. Where there are already issues and conflict it can prolong things for years.

As far as the abusive texts and threats are concerned you can of course report this to the police so there is a record. I am unsure whether you are continuing to try and insist that your son's receive what you believe your mother promised them, but if that is the case it may be sensible to back down on this as it is not legal. This may be enough to open the lines of communication with your siblings again so you can hopefully move things forward.

If you are unable to open up discussions with your siblings I would really recommend that you get some face to face legal advice on how to proceed and also what your potential liability could be if the estate is not dealt with correctly under the Rules of Intestacy and where you as Administrator may not have valued the estate correctly due to missing information, which was known to you.

You need some specialist advice I would suggest.

[Tortslife]

Thankyou so much for your response.
i knew of a insurance claim but not how much and my sister who received it and the eldest sister would not tell and stated it was none of my business. I wrote down absolutely everything I knew on the probate form..The insurance company have since I have proved the grant of probate offered to collect the money back off my sister and to pass it on to me. Which I said I will instruct at a later date, the money given was not more than the inheritance.
The house now belongs to my sister, which was passed over to her on my mothers death, I think they were joint owners.
I have no idea what happened to my mothers possessions as I said before my sisters would not tell me.
The police are involved and my sister has ignored their warnings, I am waiting for the police to get back in touch about the harassment. She is contacting friends and family accusing me of fraud and theft.
I have had a message come through that they are taking me to court and I am to pay the fees also. I have not had time to seek legal advice besides yourselves but am hoping too in the next couple of week's.
The last solicitors did not advise me to go for probate, I decided to do it myself a year after I first tried to get my sisters to sort the estate out and they refused.

[Peridot]

It sounds like you’ve done all the right things regarding the harassment. I assume the threat to take you to court is in relation to the account funds you have placed in your sons account?

im afraid the personal possessions may have to be written off so to speak. It may have been that the property contents also passed to your sister on your mother’s death. It is quite usual under a will that the house contents or personal chattels go to the person receiving the house although any of your own belongings still belong to you of course.

im glad you will be getting some advice soon. The lawyer may suggest mediation which the courts recommend too. It is potentially a very expensive business going through court proceedings in relation to an estate which, depending on the outcome could reduce the available money to be distributed quite considerably so everyone loses.

hopefully the lawyer can guide you but we’re here if you need any support.

[ostell]

But she died intestate so surely those chattels belonging to the mother should be part of the estate? I realise that it may be impossible now, after a year.

The house was jointly owned. Was it tenants in common or joint tenants?

[Peridot]

Hi @Ostell,
Of course intestate, I was trying to do too many things at once!
the property couldn’t pass without a grant unless was joint tenants rather than tenants in common.
As far as personal possessions are concerned, yes they do form part of the estate, although unless expensive antiques, jewellery etc it is unlikely they are of significant value, although personal belongings should be reflected in the inheritance tax forms for Probate.
I was more getting at the value of further fuelling, what is obviously a really tough situation and whether it is worth being principled over items that may have sentimental value but little monetary value.
It is so difficult in these types of scenario, trying to find the right balance to enable everyone to move on.

[ostell]

I agree after the act it's not worth chasing small items. I'm in a similar situation at the moment but it's not worth chasing.

However a fuller definition of the property ownership might be beneficial. I know the OP said owned jointly but a full definition is needed before attempting to argue it. As you know then if it was tenants in common then the possibly half the property is in the estate.

[Peridot]

Hi Tortslife,
You can get a copy of the Property Register for a nominal fee here: https://www.gov.uk/search-property-i...-land-registry If you don't understand what it says do post back and we can 'translate' for you.